Stayed for 3 nights with kids and booked the family cottage.
Staff delightful.
Family Cottage is pretty tired.
Walk straight into twin room, quite small with a large wardrobe, fan and bedside tables. Not enough storage to unpack cases.
Door to hall way with access to a toilet and a bathroom (not two bathrooms).
Toilet very stylish, no outside access so there is an extractor, best not to look too closely at that.
Large bathroom, bath, loo, washbasin and large walk in shower.
Tiles in the shower were actually dirty but the loo, bath and wash basin were very clean. The towels are small, threadbare and wrinkled (ie not soft and fluffy). Evidence of black mould on the ceiling, probably because the new looking extractor doesn't work and like the toilet next door there is no window.
Double bedroom is a reasonable size, overlooking the garden and is private. A large wardrobe with shelves, big TV in an old fashioned TV cabinet - no decent channels so really no point having it taking up a large portion of the room. Sherry tray on top of the TV cabinet. Tower fan - states aircon tower in room description on website, but it's a fan. Kitchen area with fridge, well stocked with drinks. Tea, coffee and milk cartons provided. Microwave and kettle. Only 3 coffee cups for 4 of us and no matching glasses for drinks. Have to wash cups and glasses straight away or the ants will invade, we didn't report this and just made sure that we kept all food type products in the fridge which is fair enough.
There is a table and 4 chairs in the kitchen but really the room is too small for this. There is a door from kitchen into the garden - this is good as it means you don't have to keep going through the twin room to access the cottage. Out here is a stone table with 2 stone semi circular seats - pretty well covered in bird droppings.
The pool is a decent size but not sparkling, in fact the day we arrived you could barely see the bottom, it did get clearer but not enough to get me in it.
4 sunbeds by the pool - they are very nice, large umbrellas too however the matresses on the sunbeds are left out at night and were a bit mouldy. Pool towels are provided.
The garden is a bit neglected, at the front of the house the paving is overgrown with grass.
The walk into Stellenbosch is a good 25 mins, unless of course we have missed some sort of short cut. No pavements until you pass the university but luckily the roads are reasonably quiet traffic wise.
I can only comment on the family cottage as I did not see any other guest rooms, the public areas in the house are lovely. The staff were very nice, however had limited local knowledge.
I suspect the standards at the 5 seasons have dropped over a period of time, unfortunately I don't think that it would get a 4 star rating if reassessed which is a real shame. All it needs is a bit of attention to detail, housekeeping monitored, the pool and garden taken care of and some general updating (flat screen TV in both rooms??, new kitchen??).
Until these issues were addressed I would not recomment the 5 Seasons, despite helpful staff and the beautiful house.
I have given 3 stars because of the staff and main house otherwise it would have been 2 stars.